As the TV show goes on and Martin is more and more involved with the announced spin-offs, it’s going to reach a point where those last two books will become less and less important. Once season 8 is done in 2019, fans of the TV show will think, “The series is over, so I’ve seen the entire story. Why should I bother waiting for books that might never come?”

The ones that have been reading the books might stick around because they want to see the details that can’t be easily translated into television, but he’s been working on “Winds of Winter” for seven years now with no release date in sight. Will “A Dream of Spring” take another decade to write after that? Wanting to write books “that will stand up to the test of time” is a nice idea, but he will be 70 in September. Does he have another decade in him?

In June 2016, Martin had a chat with Stephen King at the Kiva Auditorium in Albuquerque, NM and asked King how he writes so fast. King spends 3-4 hours a day to get six “fairly clean” pages, so a 360-page book will take him about two months if it goes well. Martin’s admitted he gets writer’s block, re-reads/re-writes what he did the day before, is distracted easily and he can only write when he’s in his own home, so the frequent trips he’s been taking relating to the show and the books means no writing on the novel gets done.

All of that is leading up to that it is very likely he won’t finish book #7 before he dies, and many people will consider the TV show a more definitive version than a book that might come “someday”.

Writers write. If I have only a limited amount of time, that’s when I’ll go back and edit bits and pieces or tackle small scenes. I save the good stuff for when I’m in the proper frame of mind. If I’m working on a part that’s not clicking, I’m not going to stop the whole project until it does. Nope. I’m going to skip ahead and write the next scene that I feel like writing. I can always go back and fill in that earlier scene when I feel like it.

Writer’s Block is a filthy lie. If somebody says they have Writer’s Block, they’re either being lazy and they really want to go play some Call of Duty, or they’re working on something that they’re just plain not interested in. Okay, fine. Stop that particular project that is boring you and go work on something else instead. If you’re absolutely stuck, go Free Write something to see if you can kick up the creative juices.

Let me tell you though, once you become a professional, and you’re doing this for a living, it doesn’t matter that you don’t feel like writing a particular thing at that time… Because your publisher has paid you an advance for that book and it is now on the schedule to be released at a certain date. You like having a job? I bet you do… Try telling your boss at your current job that you have Accountant’s Block and you just don’t feel like completing these taxes. “Oh, I’m sorry you’re having a cerebral hemorrhage, sir. I’ve got Brain Surgeon’s Block and I just can’t perform right now.”

He’s got a damn good point here. Both ways, if you don’t want to write it, and you don’t owe anyone money then don’t write it, and if you’ve taken someone’s money then you better write it.

The story he’s going to write now isn’t going to be anything like what he was going to write and he may be having issues not wanting to write that other story. He’s completing his story through other media, and unless he’s got a check from his publisher he doesn’t owe anyone anything.

This is like the people yelling at Jim Butcher, who has been writing his ass off, but on other topics than Dresden. The fans don’t actually own the author… not that I don’t complain myself, but I don’t have an actual lien on their soul.

And Martin really comes across as some diva about this, I only write at home in the dark on my 20 year old software. But, he’s making a living, it’s not like he’s one of these guys taking 10 years to write a book and begging for pennies on Patreon. He can be a diva, he’s got fuck you money.

Not Always Right occasionally does cartoons of some of their more popular stories. The one linked to below is a very good one about a delivery person who did not allow themselves to be used to hurt a woman. (Abusive, spiteful ex-husband doesn’t pay alimony or child support and orders delivery food she has to pay for.)

Youngsters struggled to understand why the TV must be on channel 3 to play games.

Last, month we asked representatives from a whole range of generational cohorts what they liked about the time into which they were born. As a member of the tail end of Generation X (sometimes referred to as a “xennial,” or by my preferred nomenclature, “the Oregon Trail generation”), my 40-year-old self identified more with the older folks in the video than with the younger, primarily because teenagers are snapchatting aliens who don’t understand the true struggle of having to memorize all their friends’ phone numbers because get off my lawn or something (and speaking of lawns, why can’t I buy a fool-proof automatic lawn mowing robot in 2018?).